ref not resolved while walking a list about json-schema-validator

[fge]

You are indeed doing something wrong, and the question therefore becomes what you want to do.

The problem is that itemsOne is not a node which pointers are collected for. Do you want the first item of your array to obey a certain schema? Do you want all items to obey a certain schema?

[fge]

My guess is that the second option is the good one. In this case this is what you have to do:

{
    "items": {
        "description": "an item in the array",
        "$ref": "reference.json"
    }
}

[kelvinpho]

Ah, you are right. In this case, I want all the items in my list to obey a certain schema.

However, there are some more complex scenarios that would create a more complex array definition. For example of the data.

{
    "orderedArray" : [
        {
            "desc" : "required first element personal data",
            "lastname" : "smith",
            "firstname" : "joe"
        },
        {
            "desc" : "any number of these",
            "phonenumber" : "111-111-1111",
            "type" : "cell"
        },
        {
            "desc" : "any number of these",
            "phonenumber" : "111-111-1112",
            "type" : "work"
        },
        {
            "desc" : "required last element personal data",
            "gender" : "M",
        }
    ]
}

Perhaps there is a better way to describe this than using an array, such as pattered properties or additional properties, but I'm not as familiar with these concepts yet.

[fge]

Hmmm, you will have difficulties here. Note: properties and {additional,pattern}Properties are only there for validating JSON Objects, not arrays.

The main problem you have is that as far as arrays are concerned, schemas for array elements are decided by both the presence or absence of items and additionalItems. And you cannot, currently, describe the schema for the last element of an array.

In fact, even though you can add keywords with my implementation, even this will not help: the ArraySchema{Digest,Selector} classes only account for the aforementioned two keywords.

The closest to what you could do is having a three-element array, where the first has its own schema, the second is an array of any number of "middle items", and the third has its own schema as well. That is, your data would be:

[
    "firstItem",
    [ "array", "of", "middle", "items" ],
    "lastItem"
]

and the maching schema would be (note: individual schemas for items left empty for brevity):

{
    "type": "array",
    "minItems": 3,
    "maxItems": 3,
    "items": [
        {},
        { "type", "array", "items": { "$ref": "#/definitions/middleItems" } },
        {}
    ],
    "definitions": {
        "middleItems": {}
    }
}

[kelvinpho]

I believe this is fixed, thanks!